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Best colors for olive skin

By the Skintonic team · SKINTONIC LLC · Updated

Olive skin is the tone most badly served by color advice, and for a specific reason: it reads green, and almost every system has only two boxes, pink and gold. An olive complexion put in the pink box looks gray; put in the gold box it looks sallow. Neither is the skin's fault.

In our own data olive sits at the cool end of the tan range, which is why Cool Summer, Light Summer, Soft Summer, Deep Winter and Cool Winter are the types that come up most across 672 combinations containing it. The practical consequence is that olive skin usually wants shades with some gray or some green already in them, rather than the cleanest version of a color.

The honest key point

Olive skin is one reading on one of the four axes, and on its own it cannot name a palette — undertone, depth, contrast and chroma name it together. So what follows is two olive skin shortlists, split by undertone, rather than one list of shades.

Olive skin at its most green

At the cool / olive end of the olive skin range, the analysis returns Cool Summer, Cool Winter, Light Summer, Soft Summer and Deep Winter across 224 runs. Eight olive skin colors drawn from them, each already published on its own season page:

Olive skin leaning toward gold

At the warm / golden end, the same sweep over 224 runs returns Deep Winter, Soft Summer, Light Summer and Bright Winter instead. Hold this eight against the eight above: they barely overlap, and both belong to people with olive skin, which is the whole argument against treating depth as the question.

What usually works against olive skin

In words rather than in shades, because standing in a shop with olive skin what you need is a category that applies to a garment nobody has photographed. With 5 types in play for olive skin, these hold across most of them, and where they disagree the disagreement is itself the answer.

Golden and orange-based shades near the face

Mustard, camel, warm brick and golden brown each bring up whatever redness the cool skin behind olive skin already has, and leave the rest of it faintly yellow in daylight. With olive skin the effect is strongest right at the neckline and gone entirely below the waist.

Three outfits for olive skin

Assembled from the olive skin chips above rather than from a lookbook — the first piece sits nearest your face and has to be right, the second is forgiving, and the third is small enough to be a bag, a scarf or a shoe.

Idea 1
  • TopDeep Raspberry
  • BottomDeep Emerald
  • AccentTrue Red
Idea 2
  • TopRose
  • BottomRose
  • AccentDeep Raspberry
Idea 3
  • TopMuted Burgundy
  • BottomTrue Red
  • AccentRose

Where to go next with olive skin

Each type has its own page with the whole explanation, including what its contrast wants and which metal sits better against it: Cool Summer, Light Summer, Soft Summer, Deep Winter and Cool Winter. For how olive skin sits against the other four depths, the skin tone overview puts them side by side.

Your exact palette depends on all four factors, not on olive skin alone. The scan reads undertone, depth, contrast and chroma from one photo, shows you the three colors it took off your face so you can correct them, and names your type — free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded.

Get my palette from one photo — free

Questions

Does olive skin mean I am a Cool Summer?

Not on its own, no. Cool Summer came up most often in the 672 runs behind this page, but Light Summer, Soft Summer, Deep Winter and Cool Winter all came up a good deal too. The depth of olive skin is one reading out of four, and the remaining three are what actually settle it.

How do I tell whether my olive skin is warm or cool?

Hold a gold chain and then a silver one against your jaw at a window, watching the olive skin rather than the metal — cool or olive skin is lifted by the silver and warm or golden skin by the gold. The undertone test walks through three more of these for olive skin. If the two metals look equally fine against olive skin, you are probably in the neutral middle, which is common and is not a failure to decide.

Can I wear black with olive skin?

Yes, and with olive skin more easily than most people manage it — black needs coloring deep enough to meet it, and the types olive skin tends toward have that depth to spare — so here it behaves like the neutral it is sold as rather than the loudest thing in the room.

Related

Colors for brown skin · Colors for deep skin · Colors for warm undertones · Every feature

Color analysis quiz · Undertone test · Check a single color · All 12 color types